determining freebsd-update status

[Tom Worster]

thanks for the answers, jason. two more questions below.


On 3/4/11 1:09 PM, "Jason Helfman" <jhelfman at e-e.com> wrote:

>On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 11:32:11AM -0500, Tom Worster thus spake:
>>to determine roughly where a server is in its updates (we're running only
>>RELEASE) i do:
>>
>>1 - check the 1st 4 fields of the tag file in the freebsd-update working
>>dir.
>
>Just because the 1st 4 fields are populated, doesn't necessarily imply it
>is
>running at that version. The tag is stating what it has recently "seen"
>as 
>available on the update server, but that doesn't mean that those updates
>have been installed.

ok.


>>
>>2 - check the output of freebsd-update IDS.
>>
>>is it the case that freebsd-update IDS checks base system status relative
>>to what's referenced in the tag file?
>
>No. The hash index file is pulled from the update server for the
>installed 
>release, and your system is compared with that.

"the installed release" being what exactly?

and how does freebsd-update determine what it is?